Erhu On A Sunday

Tomorrow, Sunday the 19th of April Is when I will be recording Nicholas Ng, an Erhu player…and as Big-Kev said so many years ago, “I’m excited!”

I will be recording Nicholas at SAE-QANTM Brisbane in the Audient studio to use in our latest game, Dyadic and am in the process of writing the score for him to use to play the melody lines. When I originally contacted Nicholas, we had arranged for his ensemble to come in but good old Murphy’s law has shown up and now Nicholas has been kind enough to come in on behalf of the ensemble, with the possibility of recording the other members at a later date.

So what is an Erhu?

The Erhu is a traditional Chinese bowed instrument which has two strings usually tuned to a perfect 5th (D4 and A4). The strings float, for it does not have a fingerboard and the player places the Erhu on their left thigh and holds it upright to play. Unlike a western bowed instrument, the Erhu’s bow runs between the strings, instead of on top of them.

The Erhu can use either western or numerical notation (similar to TAB) and because I haven’t learnt the subtleties of the Chinese numerical system and Nicholas can read both, I will be writing the parts in western notation.